Watchdog Group Questions Motives of Humane Society of the United States President’s Book Tour

Through its “HumaneWatch.org” project, the nonprofit Center for Consumer Freedom (CCF) is criticizing today’s release of The Bond, a new book by Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) President Wayne Pacelle. In the book, Pacelle lectures Americans about “The Bond” between animals and humans, though he has previously conceded that “there’s no special bond between me and other animals.”

Rick Berman, the Center for Consumer Freedom’s Executive Director, released the following statement about the beginning of Pacelle’s “The Bond” book tour:

If you see a copy of The Bond in a bookstore window, you’d be forgiven for thinking it’s a book about humans and their emotional connection to their pets. After all, the cover is an adorable picture of a young boy hugging his dog. But this isn’t a story about man’s best friend; it’s a book about why it is immoral for human beings to eat meat, fish, cheese, dairy, and eggs. Pacelle believes that any human who doesn’t subscribe to his vegan philosophy is a tyrant, complicit in widespread animal cruelty.

Wayne Pacelle and the Humane Society of the United States routinely employ this kind of emotional bait and switch—reeling people in with cute pictures of dogs and cats and then knocking them over the head with a radical animal rights philosophy.

Just look at the way Pacelle’s HSUS solicits donations from the American public. Their ads show pictures of mournful cats and dogs being kept in cages, and ask you for money to help them. And yet, less than one percent of that money goes to support hands-on pet shelters. The vast majority of donations are used to support a huge staff of lawyers and lobbyists, fund bloated executive pension plans, pay for exorbitant fundraising expenses, and bankroll an animal rights agenda that attacks modern farming.

Just as you’d be forgiven for thinking The Bond is a book about people’s connections with their pets, so too you’d be forgiven for thinking that HSUS is an umbrella group for Humane Society pet shelters. But don’t be fooled, neither are what they appear.